If you are making marketing videos indoors with a smartphone, webcam or camera, you will need some form of lighting to enhance your subject. If you can get away with using available natural or artificial light, that is ideal (as described in our course on making videos with your smartphone ). In many cases however, that isn’t possible particularly if you have to use a home studio – a grand title for a spare bedroom

Many people watch video content on their tablets and smartphones in public places or at work where they don’t want to disturb others with sound. The closed captioning (cc) or subtitles feature in many video players means they can read text instead of listening. To add subtitles on  video platforms such as Vimeo you have to upload a file often called a .srt or .vtt file containing the transcript and

Offering a useful free downloadable document through social media is a very good way of attracting and engaging with potential customers. It provides evidence of your expertise and you are already adding value even before the customer buys something. Examples are guides, tip sheets, checklists, infographics (like the one above) and anything else that is genuinely useful in itself, and is not a sales brochure. Here are four tips to

There are a lot of very good videos and articles on LinkedIn and other social media. They provide evidence of the author’s expertise or skill, but many stand alone, with no links to anything else. If you are selling your services, this is a missed opportunity. Every buyer is on a journey. Customers don’t wake up in the morning, reach for their phone and buy something. They go through progressive

This can be a bit awkward if you are not used to it. Also, even if you are used to it, it can have unsatisfactory results. Imagine you were at a networking event or you were exhibiting at a trade show, and you had a conversation with someone who seemed to be a likely customer for your business. You probably also exchanged business cards. The follow-up call A few days

I love historical stories of great marketers who weren’t actually marketers ( Cicero , Aristotle   Cave Men ). This week I discovered Frederick the Great’s Marketing Problem. He ruled Prussia from 1740-1786 and although he is probably best known for his military activities, he was also a great moderniser for social improvement and wealth creation. When there was a risk of famine in Prussia, he introduced the potato which had only recently been

During October you will be bombarded with “help” to prepare for Brexit, from the DIT to anyone who wants to climb on the bandwagon. Having sat through DIT presentations and seen what other organisations are planning, I can save you a whole lot of trouble. All they will do is signpost you to https://www.gov.uk/find-eu-exit-guidance-business because, quite simply, nobody has a better guide, and nobody has any information on how it will

– and avoid giving things away! Pricing is always a sensitive topic. Customers want to know how much something costs before they buy it, and suppliers don’t want to tell everyone (including their competitors) what something costs because often “it depends”. Unless you are selling a commodity product where the price is known at the start, there is a debate about whether you should expose your pricing structure early on

What is happening? From 14th September 2019 an update to the EU’s Payment Services Directive (known as PSD2) will change requirements for many online payments for customers in the European Economic Area (EEA). From this date, Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) will be required for online payments between businesses based in the EEA and customers based in the EEA. SCA requires two or more of the following elements to authenticate someone

Fun Boy Three and Bananarama, 1982. Does that take you back? I am constantly seeing debates on LinkedIn arguing whether cold calling has been superseded by social selling, or that digital marketing is the way to go. All I’m reading is about “what” you do not the “way” that you do it. You know what? It doesn’t matter what you do if you aren’t doing it the right way. Whether you are cold calling

Brian Halligan didn’t say that, but he made me think it. Brian is the founder of Hubspot, the sales and marketing app/suite/platform that has been a huge influencer in the world of business development since 2006. I was fortunate to catch Brian in a “fireside chat” session hosted by Christian Kinnear at the London Hubspot User Group meeting. Brian is awesome. He is one of those entrepreneurs who come up

Have you ever dreaded going to a client meeting, knowing it was going to be really tough? It happens to all of us, and I have had my share of them. Some caused by my own actions, latterly in senior roles to take one for the team. I have learned some tactics over the years, which can not only make the experience less stressful, they can significantly improve the outcome.

Book Review: Graham Shaw: “The Speakers Coach – 60 secrets to make your talk, speech or presentation amazing”. You can add to that list: pitch, demonstration, lesson – or any communication where you want to attract, engage and inspire your audience. There are some lessons here that can be used in simple conversations too. I am a big fan of Graham Shaw. He is an expert at communicating visually –

“I slept like a baby” How come people never say “slept like a stressed out marketing director?” For the very good reason that often, adults don’t sleep so well and as a result their energy and performance suffer the following day. We invited Dan Collins, Team Facilitator and Sleep Coach to speak at our January techUK Marketing and Sales meeting to tell us how improved sleep can improve our performance

A colleague recommended I read “Black Box Thinking” by Matthew Syed. Not quite knowing what to expect, I did. And what a powerful message. A message about the value of learning from mistakes, and the critical importance of maintaining an organisational culture that welcomes the opportunity to learn from failure rather than punishing it. The title comes from the key example of the benefits of this approach. As you can

Despite the publicity, there still seems to be mystique and misunderstanding about the Data Protection rules (GDPR) yet the principles are very simple. So simple in fact that you could explain them to a child. The original terminology can be off-putting but let’s see through that to the seven key principles in Article 5 of the GDPR which guide data protection: If you borrow toys (personal information) you must play

I am sure you have come across some daft ways of making life difficult, attributed to GDPR. Here are a collection of some bonkers Christmas-related GDPR challenges and the facts behind them. You can’t contact parents to tell them what stall they will be running at the school Xmas Fayre because you don’t have their express consent  Churches cannot ask for Christmas prayers for named parishioners who are ill or

I was flattered to be included in the list of “Thought Leaders” at the IoT-Build (Internet of Things) Conference this week, and invited to join the panel to discuss skills and training needs for the workplace. Chaired by Matt Hatton of Gartner, we had an interesting and wide-ranging discussion on the changing skills required, which in turn is impacted by our education system, social and business cultures and even politics.

A Chat feature on your website can increase engagement particularly at that vital point when visitors are about to place an order or take further action. It also makes your business appear sophisticated, professional and well-established. You might have thought that having a Chat feature for website visitors is only for brands with big budgets and thousands of visitors. Not so. There are a number of Chat applications that can

The G-word isn’t history yet, and there still seems to be confusion about whether you can send marketing emails to people. In fact it is not GDPR that covers this, but the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) which has been around since 2003 – last updated in 2018. The ICO have a helpful checklist on what can and can’t be done here:  , and plenty of helpful guidance on PECR